


since i can't remember when

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [117]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: "you're such a jerk" means "i love you", Disabled Character, Grief, M/M, Mentally Ill Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7911313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy's still past ninety. She's still fragile as glass, more fragile even than he ever was, and a round of pneumonia could carry her off without warning. She's still dying - maybe slower now, maybe with a few more years before it closes in, and definitely happier, and Christ yes, that matters, it matters so much. But still dying. </p>
<p>That still hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	since i can't remember when

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.
> 
> Reminder that canon for this fic still stops at _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_. (Emphatically.) 
> 
> [if you're reading this at time of posting, 08/29/16, this is the first of several I hope to be posting over the next couple days soooo.]

Steve hasn't quite been able to figure out the mechanism in the new treatment Peggy's getting. He's got a paper - maybe it's a monograph? he forgets what the difference is - on the stuff saved to the tablet and he keeps meaning to go read it, and not getting around to it. There's enough going on these days, between the normal every-day and the methodical stepping up of all the background _stuff_ that needs to get nailed down and sorted out if they _are_ going to give the idea of the Avengers as a working team a go (at least for anything less than world-ending alien invasions), that his head feels kinda bruised a lot. 

But only metaphorical bruising. Nowhere near as bad as it had during the War, trying to shove every map, operation, language and anything else that might be useful in through his eyes and ears and not have it dribble out, useless, but the same kind of feeling. 

(It's not the same kind of feeling as two years of dredging through everything on the human psyche he could find, hoping to find the stuff that would help. Steve's not sure why. There's no logical reason for it to feel different. Sure it was more dire and important than the stuff right now, but so was the War. Just, this feels like the War, and feels like shoving stuff in any which way no matter how hard he tries to get some order behind it, where the other stuff felt like an endless march.) 

(Nowadays it feels more like a hunt. Like he's caught up with the vanguard and now they're all just scrabbling through the woods for the next objective.) 

So he hasn't read the thing (whatever it's called) on the treatment, not enough to have an idea of exactly what it's doing - but whatever it's doing, it's doing it really well. Peggy hasn't just stopped forgetting, getting lost and confused in her own mind, she's actually getting back things she'd remembered before, and sometimes - though rarely - even piecing together things from the fog when the dementia started to really take hold.

Sharon'd taken a month from work, so that her cousin could go back to Australia and the life he'd put on hold, while it looked like Peggy might not make it at all. Steve hadn't formed much of an impression of Peggy's grandson, to tell the truth - didn't seem to be a bad guy at all, just didn't seem to have much to him, either. Like somehow the fire Peggy had, the fire she's always had and still does, hadn't managed to run down the direct line. Had jumped sideways to hit her great-niece instead.

Steve's never heard exactly why Peggy and Sharon are so close, but Peggy and her own grandkids aren't - or, for that matter, why Sharon never talks about her parents or anything like that. Why Sharon's the one who moved to the East Coast so Peggy could stay in care somewhere she recognized, remembered. Why Peggy moved to New York when Sharon did, and Peggy's surviving son and all her grandkids stayed in England and Australia. He doesn't want to pry. Peggy never seemed upset about it, and neither did Sharon, and he knew the others called and used Skype and everything else. At least one of the grandkids had several kids of her own, and it's hard to uproot a whole family. And it's not really any of his business. 

Sometimes he feels like it should be, somehow, but that doesn't make the feeling right. 

So he doesn't want to pry. And for all Peggy seems pretty happy with how her life went, there's lots of ways little regrets can get tangled up in a life, especially with family. With kids, and who they turn out to be, and who their kids turn out to be. Ways where nobody did anything wrong as _such_ but something still went crooked. And then pulled back a different way. And sometimes it's not even regret, because you couldn't do anything differently - can't change who people are, what they need, and nobody did anything wrong, that kind of thing - just . . . sadness. 

So he doesn't pry, and Sharon doesn't offer, and until recently Peggy deciding to explain hadn't even been an option. She might, Steve supposes. She might now. But he doesn't know. 

Peggy's doing well enough she can actually handle two visitors at once, most of the time, which means Steve's actually seen her and Sharon together. It's funny how much Sharon _doesn't_ look like Peggy. The line of their jaws, the shape of their faces, eyes, mouth, hairline: it's all different. When it comes to just . . . physical things, it barely seems like they could be related. 

Then you watch Sharon gesture, or the shape of Peggy's frown, and it's like a stamp, or a mould. The sameness catches you out, or catches Steve out, until suddenly it's gone again and Sharon's stopped being Peggy's mirror. Because there's plenty she does that isn't anything like Peggy, too. 

Steve watches Sharon with her great-aunt, and gets the definite feeling that before, she was working as hard as she could not to show how badly Peggy's deterioration hurt her. She seems younger, but in a good way. 

Steve hadn't actually been around to witness Adam getting the third degree, meeting Peggy for the first time - or at least the first time she could form a meaningful impression. Sharon had told Steve over text, though, that afterward Adam said the interview for level five SHIELD clearance had been easier. Steve believes it: Peggy'd want to know exactly who her great-niece is planning to marry, and whether she needs to warn Sharon off, and she'd take that seriously. 

It's also the best evidence there is that she's . . . well, better, if not in the sense of "totally well", then at least very much in the sense of "better than she was". It's a good thing. And she's much, much happier, which is the most important thing. As far as the world goes, that's a big victory. 

Steve thought that'd make things easier. Hurt less. He's not ecstatic about finding out he was wrong, although looking back he realizes he should've known. And he was wrong. Very wrong. It doesn't really hurt less. It just hurts different. Before, the sudden spikes helpless unhappiness because she was upset, or the pangs of grief because she'd forgotten again, all of that kind of miserable thing - they'd distracted him from the acid, gnawing ache that he can't get away from, can't do anything about, can't beat. Now that's gone. 

The thing is, Peggy's still past ninety. She's still fragile as glass, even more fragile than he ever was, and a round of pneumonia could carry her off without warning. She's still dying - maybe slower now, maybe with a few more years before it closes in, and definitely happier, and Christ yes, that matters, it matters so much. But - still dying. 

That still hurts. 

 

He's not sure if he actually noticed Bucky following him this time or if it's . . . confirmation bias? Is that the word? that makes him think he did. Not sure that it's not just that his subconscious is guessing based on nothing real, and it happens this time it's right. Because he couldn't tell you what gave him the feeling. Just that he had it. Has it.

Just that, as he stands leaning against the table and looking at the photograph of Peggy from 1943 in his hand, Steve's not surprised that the balcony door opens. Because he's pretty sure Bucky followed him to the hospital-disguised-as-a-house, and back. 

For a minute, he doesn't say anything, and Bucky doesn't say anything. Abrikoska says something, running over out of Steve's peripheral vision to (he knows without having to look) jump up on the table and crawl up Bucky's arm. At least for a moment. Sometimes she stays, sometimes she doesn't, goes back to what she was doing. But there's always the moment. And who in Hell knows what she's actually saying, in Cat. 

When he hears his own voice ask, "Was this what it was like?" Steve wants to kick himself. He wants spool back the time and cut it that moment right out, start over. And right now he wants to apologize, since that's the best he can do on that score. But he just ends up standing right where he is and staring at the photo. 

It's not a question he should ask. It's a stupid question. It's a stupid question, probably a risky question, probably even a God-damned cruel question, and he should be ashamed of himself - and kinda is. For more reasons than one. 

_Was this what it was like?_

_It_ takes a lot of freight, in that sentence. Carries a lot, for one little word, just two letters. So does _this_ and for all it's got twice as many letters, that's still probably more than it should have to. Those two words are just kind of . . . ciphers, shapes standing in for ideas, big ones, and more than one idea each. Standing in for those ideas but also kinda hiding them. If he didn't try to hide them maybe that question would be longer. 

Describe being always on the cusp of losing someone, where they're resigned to it and you're not, where they're determined to face up to it and you don't want anything to do with even the damned _idea_ ; what it's like to want to look after someone, so they'll be there, and not be able to do a God-damned thing, not really. Nothing except wait til the morning you wake up and they're not there anymore, and the whole thing is over. All of it. 

That's what he's asking. And he's got no right to. 

Bucky's leaning on the wall just inside Steve's peripheral vision, arms crossed. And after a minute, he says, "No." 

Steve looks up at Bucky, at that, and he's kind of torn between being thrown by the answer because it's not the one he'd been expecting, and noticing the slight hollow-shadow-darkness to Bucky's eyes. Wondering if he should be worried. Thinking how even with that, the look Bucky gives him is one of those ones that makes it seems like he knows what Steve's feeling better than Steve does. 

Which isn't - well. It's not impossible. Steve could believe that. 

"You were eight," Bucky elaborates, quietly. "And twelve. And seventeen. And. . . I dunno, twenty one. You were a kid. You weren't fucking ninety. You _didn't_ already have a whole life, and you didn't even get to do much of what you fucking wanted with what you did have, and you _weren't_ actually fucking okay with your life ending any of those times you were just fucking stubborn. And stupid." 

It's true. Those are . . . all good points. All the truth, even if he doesn't like it. They don't help, but they're true. 

Seems fucking unfair, that something can be both of those - true and unhelpful - but all those are and Steve sighs, reaching over to put the picture down on the desk and then pinching the bridge of his nose. He should still apologize. 

"I keep thinking," he says instead, standing up and putting the photo down, frame flat on the table, "it'd be different if I could make it _feel_ like eighty years ago, instead of less than eight."

"Yeah, well," Bucky replies, "you do kinda like feeding yourself bullshit sometimes."

It's a little like getting cold water thrown in his face; when Steve stares at him, Bucky snorts and adds, "You gonna try telling me you'd ever be okay with losing somebody? Even before - " and then he stops, almost abrupt, and after a beat he finishes the statement with a one-handed gesture encompassing . . . 

A lot of stuff, probably. TB and the War and a trestle in the fucking Alps and waking up in -

Steve has to look away, because he can't answer that. Can't actually stand the truth, and won't lie. 

After a second, Steve feels Bucky's left hand close on his wrist. He lets Bucky pull him over until Bucky's leaning against the wall as he pulls Steve in, rests Steve's forehead against his shoulder and cradles the back of Steve's head with his right hand. Bucky's left hand rests on Steve's shoulder. 

"Idiot," Bucky says softly. 

"Yeah, shut up," Steve replies, effort less than half-hearted, his arms wrapping gracelessly around Bucky's waist. 

And even this doesn't make it easier. 

Well. 

It does, but not because it makes anything about Peggy hurt less. Bucky being where Steve can see him, touch him, hear his voice and smell his skin - none of it does anything about Peggy, none of it changes a damn thing. Just means he's not piling all of the hurt, everything about all of it that hurts so God-damn much, on top of a sucking black tear in his soul, and then trying to pretend he can live with it. It's overwrought and dramatic, but it's also exactly how it was, and _he_ remembers _then_ more than well enough to know how bad it could still be. 

It's not that bad. But that's not the same as making something hurt less. 

"I missed you," he says: stupid words, inane. And he doesn't, can't quite move on to actually say, _I'm going to miss her._ Not out loud. 

Such fucking inadequate words. Both sets. But they're the ones that are actually true, that don't have something in them that strikes a wrong note, so they're what he's got. 

_I missed you. I'm going to miss her. And I hate this._

"I know," Bucky says. "I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
